CORBYN COMES UP WITH A LABOUR BREXIT POLICY!
JEREMY Corbyn has ruled out Labour voting to stay in the European Economic Area after Brexit, his spokesman said last night.
The party leader’s stance appears to crush diehard Remainers’ hopes of winning a Commons vote to keep Britain in the single market.
Membership of the EEA provides full access to the single market. But it comes at a high cost, with members forced to pay into the EU budget and to accept both EU rules
and free movement of people. Brexiteers had feared Labour MPs would back a Lords amendment calling for Britain to stay in the EEA after Brexit.
But, after a stormy meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party yesterday, Mr Corbyn’s spokesman said: ‘Jeremy has made clear that the EEA packages currently in existence do not meet the needs and the priorities we’ve set out and the Norway option is not appropriate and will not work for the Brexit we want to see.’ The Lords had urged a Norway-style deal that would keep the UK’s borders open and mean continuing to pay into EU coffers.
But pro-Brexit Labour MP John Mann said the EEA option was ‘killed dead’ after last night’s meeting of the party’s MPs.
It came as Norway’s premier said it would not block the UK from staying in the EEA. Erna Solberg told The Financial Times: ‘I think we will cope very well if the Brits come in [as a non-EU member] … it would ease Norway’s access to the UK.’